UCI Management Grad School Now on U.S. Top-50 List

For the first time, the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management has cracked the list of the top 50 business schools in the nation, according to a Business Week survey.

The rankings are based on surveys of corporate recruiters and 1998 graduates from 61 top U.S. schools.

Students had to rank their schools’ teaching quality, program content and career placement. Recruiters assessed the students’ skills and then ranked schools on overall quality and reputation.

Wharton College topped the list, followed by Kellogg College, University of Chicago, University of Michigan and Harvard University. Only the top 25 schools were ranked numerically.

UC Irvine placed in the second group of 25 campuses. The management graduate school, which started offering master’s degrees in the 1980s, has 840 MBA students.

Graduate students at UCI participated in the survey, which seeks the best of an estimated total of 700 MBA programs in the U.S. today.

“We are delighted,” said David H. Blake, the graduate school’s dean. “This is a remarkable accomplishment given the small size of [the graduate school] and the fact that its MBA program is less than 20 years old.”

Such recognition comes, in part, because of the school’s specialty focus on information technology management. Recruiters, desperate for technology-savvy staffers, have been snatching up graduates like crazy.

Three months after receiving their master’s degrees in business administration this past winter, more than 90% of the students already had job offers with an average annual salary of $84,000. The average salary for other MBA graduates from UCI was $67,000.

Such “techno-MBA” programs have been cropping up at business schools across the country over the past couple of years. UCI’s program, long overshadowed by the Ivy League universities and other prestigious schools, is drawing attention with a cutting-edge approach that uses technology throughout with its curriculum.

Last year, the program was rated among the nation’s top 20 technology programs by U.S. News & World Report and Computerworld magazines.

In the Business Week survey, four California schools were ranked among the top 25 institutions. Stanford University ranked 9th; UCLA 12th; UC Berkeley 16th and USC 25th.

Times community news correspondent James Meier contributed to this report.